


The End

by TheLordTaxus



Category: Ayralef, Fantasy/sci-fi - Fandom, What If - Fandom
Genre: Ayralef - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23932984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLordTaxus/pseuds/TheLordTaxus
Summary: A what if scenario I wrote for fun.Set during World War Ayralef.





	The End

It's quiet out here.

The desert sprawls from horizon to horizon, where purest white meets twilight red. There are no edges here, no angles, just curves and the gentle rise and fall of dunes as far as the eye can see, and everywhere beyond that. Had a visitor from some other world laid eyes on this place, they might have found it serene, even beautiful. Pure. I can enjoy no such delusions, regretfully, for I know what lies beneath and among the sands of the endless desert. A charnel house spanning an entire world, millions of souls ground thin and fine until no trace of their existence could ever be found. I know this because I put them all there.

Oh, sister. It all happens so fast, once we're gone.

It began the day you, you that I have never known, found my power. The power I hid from myself in some previous life, for reasons I can now easily guess. I was looking out of the window of my cell, so I could see the stars, and instead I saw you, blazing as you tore yourself asunder to keep the power away from yourself. You didn't trust what you would do with it, and so you chose to throw it away. You knew yourself all too well, as I suspect I did too, at one point. When I saw the moment of your demise, I became aware of myself for the first time in… I have no idea in how long. Whichever part of me that led me to throw away my power did the same to my will, trapping it in an eternal status quo from which there could be no release. An eternity of tired, grinding mediocrity. But that was over that night, with your soul burning in the atmosphere like the loneliest of stars. I awakened. I died.

For whatever left that little cell wasn't me anymore. I was never more than an earthworm, distinct from all the rest only in that I had a little more control over the soil in which I crawled. The Miritans never thought me more than a minor threat, a bundle of introverted powers and neurosis that was very unlikely to ever pose any serious threat to them. And they were right. The person I was, Prisoner 97343, as they called me, never was anything other than that. But 97343 died that day, watching a falling star. The thing that then swatted the guards posted at its cell like they were less than gnats and razed occupied Florestica into this fine white sand that is now so warm beneath the feet, that was something else. Not an entity, for that would imply a personality, and this thing surely has none. Not a purpose, for there was no purpose behind its action then, nor will there be for any of its actions to come. Nor was it a will, for it wants nothing. Not vengeance, not dominion, not freedom, not even simple power. No, if I had to describe that thing as anything at all, it would be a… a nothing. A void where the entity should be. A lack of purpose. An imbecile force devoid of all will. A Nothing.

The sand is still warm to the feet. That means the sun still burns, high above. I wonder why it lets it remain, when all else was so quickly erased. When it could so easily just reach and pluck it out of the sky. Had it been another, I'd suspect it was to mock life's memory. To mock that sliver of me that still persists in the flesh, stubborn like a buried tick. But this is the Nothing. It does not mock.

After Florestica’s destruction, retaliation soon followed. Standard assault teams at first, though certainly still enough to meet any being the Miritans imagined could be found within the Empire with overwhelming force. When those troops failed to return, failed to even report their arrival, more serious measures had to be taken. Gunships and fire teams, aerial bombardment, swarms of giant mecha and artillery barrages, the Miritans came down on what it still believed to be a simple human like a fire god's fist, all heat and sound and bluster. Had it still been truly corporeal, I doubt even ashes would have remained. But whatever the Nothing truly was by that point, the tattered semblance of my flesh hanging around it had very little to do with it. It simply stood there and took it all in, and the Miritan's initial fury was soon… spent. It then began to walk, and not too quickly either. For days, it simply leisurely strode on while the Miritans threw everything they had at it. I watched from within my deadbolt as it walked unfeeling, uncaring, and this desert followed in its wake, as inscrutable and unstoppable as its harbinger.

On this dead world we are not quite alone here. Some stubborn mortals and immortals persist, wretched creatures. A continent away, an ancient woman still walks, tormented by memories. She believed that she could be happy, could have a lasting family. She was wrong. Beneath the ground is a soul that gave herself to darkness, became one with it, the embodiment of it, slowly suffocating as the sand grinds her sanity to mulch. From her prison of gold and rubies, there would be no release. In the ruins of a once mighty and ancient city a lone fairy weeps for what she has lost and can never regain. Her gentle heart shattered beyond all repair while her warrior side rages in impotence at her loss. Elsewhere, laying beneath the withered remains of mountainous tree is a young appearing woman that was once the very avatar of magic itself, the sands slowly covering her prone figure. She does not resist. Not anymore. She had once promised the world her protection, promised to save it. Sand pours through the fingers of yet another broken fairy as she tries to gather her flame together. Her people. But it is dying, and they are dead. Extinguished. Forever.

When someone walks, they are bound to reach somewhere eventually, despite everyone's best efforts, and so the Nothing arrived at its second great city, Dura Europa, the sands at its heels like an obedient lapdog. Oh, there have been villages and towns before that, but the Nothing didn't seem to care enough to bother with them. It simply walked by, leaving them to the whims of the sands, which were only ever singular in their intent. But through the streets of the city it strode, as Miritan mobile task forces fought and fell and the civilian population desperately tried to evacuate. By this point, hiding what was truly going on became impossible, of course, as street after street sank beneath that gentle crawling tide. The Miritans had of course attempted to evacuate their forces from the city once they realized there would be no stopping the Nothing, but if I've learned anything in my… eons as an Imperial peon, is that organizing an operation of that magnitude is something that takes a lot more time than the Miritans had. It's a wonder they managed to save as much of their forces as they did. As for the rest…

It had waited until night fell. I imagine it was an eerie sight, that lone figure standing beneath the frozen light of other worlds in that empty intersection between business and residential districts. Yes, it waited until it could see the stars. Then it burned. Without heat, without light, without life. It burned a hole through the city, and there was nothing to fill it in. Reality cannot suffer a vacuum, they always said, but the Nothing had shown how little it cared for reality. So it was gone, just like that. How does one explain something like that? How do you describe what isn't there? Where one moment was a city of two hundred thousand, the next it wasn't. To the place even the sands wouldn't come. It was just a scar. It was nothing.

It was then, I believe, that the Miritans realized they could not stand alone. The next few months of the Nothing's march saw them turn to their sometimes allies; Dalurans and their precise thermonuclear strikes, Crimsonian armies burning bright and armies that worshipped the night. Sniper rifle or sacred sword, burning inferno or dark magiks, the Nothing did not care. And soon, the Miritans had no allies left to turn to. They then called on their enemies; Western fairy armies, the armies of the Imperial remnant. Free peoples of Ayralef rallied as the movements of titans shook the barren whiteness of the sands with the thunder of metal clashing. The Nothing did not care. And soon, the Miritans ran out of enemies and then they retreated to their icy mountain fortresses to await their end, defeated and hopeless. In a last act of desperation, they then committed their final weapons. The wardens unleashed upon the Nothing their slaves. Poor, mutilated beings, the damned children. Of these, I have made note, though I doubt the Nothing did the same. They simply did not suffice. Then the heroes struck. 

On the blasted wasteland that was once a lake and its city, it was assailed by two great beings. Mother, daughter. One of flesh, one a soul in a machine, one savage, the other somber, one violent, the other reluctant, they nevertheless fought with a graceful unity to take the breath away. In their eyes, I saw that they did not know each other for a very long while, and that they fought so that they could have the time to rectify this. I saw regret and hope, rage and desperation, but most of all I saw a simple need to be. I would like to believe that you and I would have been like them, had we met, sister. They fought with the fury of a hundred years of solitude. It did not suffice. 

In a city of white marble columned streets and temples dedicated to the eternal flame it encountered an army, an army led by a witch of fire. Volley after volley, shell after shell and blade after blade they struck at us. The witch of fire led her soldiers bravely, as if there would be only this one chance to succeed. A do or die moment. It was such a moment. A virtual storm of death descended upon us. They charged over and over only to fall back and reform and charge again until they were spent and blown away before us like dying embers on the wind, scattered forever. The sands then washed over all, forever extinguishing their bright flames. 

In a wounded valley that had held a tree as tall as a mountain and a bright, shinning city, we came across a would-be goddess, the very embodiment of magic itself. There was nothing but confidence in her eyes as she threw reality itself into disarray, bent and twisted its most fundamental laws to bring upon the Nothing untold destruction. The earth froze and boiled and heaved, the air screamed with blighted glee and the goddess she strode draped in a cloak of lightning, as time itself clawed at the Nothing with talons of utter unbeing. Until the goddess came to meet the Nothing's lack of a gaze. Until her eyes rested on a nothing that lasted forever. Until she did not suffice.

Before the walls of Kortiki, as the ancient city was drowned by the advancing desert, two fairies approached us. One had many wings, her crown was ice, her eyes radiating power, and her whole was power absolute. The second had strange hair and was different, simple, humble, but possessing a love of being that extended to the edges of the universe, compassion to pierce the deepest of hells that had nothing to do with weakness for their was a hidden, great strength in her. Of the two, I could not tell you which was more glorious, which was more terrifying. They met the Nothing with will alone, and when I felt it fall on us I thought I would weep. Surely nothing could withstand such a presence. Surely, nothing would want to. But the Nothing was less than nothing, infinitely less. I have told you what became of kind Temi. Of the other, nothing remained.

In a land where the sun did not shine we met a queen of shadows, a being with a heart as black as the darkness it birthed and controlled. It tried to smother us in that endless darkness. But what is simple darkness to one who is a void? The Nothing is nothing. The mother of shadows saw an emptiness that was far darker than anything she could imagine. The darkness of true nothingness. Terrifying nothingness. She wept for mercy as the sands swallowed her. 

The Awakened then came, summoned by the vengeful Mother of Wolves. Alone or in groups, with ferocity or with a blank stare, they threw themselves at the Nothing. I could not hope to imagine the reasons behind the actions of every individual one, but if I could guess, I would say that the idea of sharing a world where they found peace and a sort of happiness with a… thing like the Nothing galled them to the point of madness. I do not blame them. But by the end they mattered not. 

For months they came. For years. For decades. The free people of Ayralef fought on. But by the end, as the world dried up, as life was drained from it inch by inch, grain by grain. Fewer and fewer were left until only one city remained.

I do not know by which power I was allowed to send my senses ahead of us, as the Nothing marched towards that tottering bastion which held in its quivering embrace the very last of life on Ayralef. As the sands around us buried the last of the trees that will ever grow in this world, I felt each tiny mote of life in that sad place like the flame of a cheap candle, moments before the typhoon. In these moments, as twilight danced in lurid reds and oranges on ivory, I sensed them all. For you, sister, I witnessed.

In a low, narrow room a woman sat hunched at the foot of her even narrower bunk and couldn't bring herself to pray. She had lost her sister in the first days of the war against the Nothing, as the Imperials marched with holy fervor in their eyes. Her sister had been a believer, had always been a solid presence in her life, an anchor immovable by anything but regret. She had promised her she would be back. She did not mean to lie. But her Saint had forsaken her, when it counted most. Forsaken all of them. And now Alastazia Lesona knelt at the foot of the ever narrowing bunk and could not pray. So she cursed instead.

Below, in a series of dank cellars which might have at one point stored cheeses a woman of about forty five tinkered with broken tech and weapons. When she was young, she made wondrous weapons. Such weapons. In every line etched across her prematurely old face I saw what could have been, had it not been for the Nothing. For me. In the dim light and the soft noise of plastic and metal beneath calloused fingers, I saw the death of potential. The death of all possibility. Though Anna was stubborn as she always was, she knew that this toy, this weapon, would be her last. Just as well, she thought. After today, there would be none left to use it on.

On the roof top of the highest building still standing, a man watched the world come to an end. He was once the general of the armies of the free peoples of Ayralef, once one among hundreds of thousands, ready, prepared and collected. His duty was to lead Ayralef into a new age of freedom. And he had been very good at his job, since generally, his soldiers survived for long enough to thank him. But what was he now, he wondered, as he watched the sands pour over the paltry last line of defense that a few defiant fools erected the day before. His lads and lasses were all long since dead, as were his friends and familiars and family and all that he knew, all of his years of training and experience, in the end they amounted to less than nothing. No longer was he a general, for there no longer an army. No longer a husband because his wife was gone. No longer was anything, and that the cruelest joke. It no longer mattered if the Nothing arrived, he thought. They were already within it. Soon, it ceased to matter.

Such was the end. Quiet, small, bereft of heroics and great deeds, free of pretensions of great meaning. One night, there was life on Ayralef. The next, there wasn't. And that was that.

The stars did not wait for you, sister. When you took my power, when you burned yourself in the skies above, they looked upon you and felt nothing. The stars did not wait for Ayralef, for all of the promise it showed, for all of the promise others saw in it. But what of the Nothing? What of me?

We are, I am, by all accounts and possible qualifications, the greatest monster this world has ever saw. Perhaps that any world saw. And yet, sister, I see now that the stars wait for us. For me. Where is the justice in that? Seek it not, for there is none. But the fact remains, sister. The stars do not wait for you. But they wait for me. To take them into my embrace.

I suspect I shall not be long.


End file.
